I'm doing some inventory cleaning of my so called "portfolio". Putting stuff in place, basically. The fact is that I never showed most of my Yafa renders on this forum and now that I think of it I'm not really sure why. Probably I was too shy in my self-induced belief that the stuff is too noobish to show. Now that I'm more wise I know that the work was as good as it was supposed to be, considering my experience at the time. So I was mostly lurking and gaining wisdom from other people's works. BTW, this is a bad thing to do. Basically as a beginner you want as much commentary & critics of your work as possible. So if any newbies read this - don't be afraid to post your work, we are nice people! Most of the time, anyway.

First comes the retrospective, new stuff later. Please take note of the date of the render and the fact that I started learning CG from scratch in 2009.07, thanks

* 2009.08, Blue living roomMost people start CG with archviz, so did I. BTW, archviz is the second most lame topic you can do. The undisputed king of the lamest render subject is studio car render, of course One of my first models in Blender and the first Yafa render. I discovered Yafa very quickly so I did maybe two renders with Blender internal, then I stopped using it in favor of Yafa. I found the painting picture on the net, so credit for it goes to whomever is the author.

* 2009.08, Abstract light bulb scenarioLight bulbs from the past, present and future. Well, that future is nowadays mostly the present. Very basic materials & lighting, but bulb models are not that bad.

* 2009.08, Green bedroomThis was a try to copy some real bedroom from a magazine and it turned out quite good (if I ever find that magazine, I'll post the original picture). The materials are already better and lighting also. It was rendered with photon-mapping (you can notice subtle caustic patches on the wall).

If anyone is wondering about the book on the stand;

* 2009.09, NestvorMy first try at sculpting in Blender and advanced materials in Yafa. The sculpting went better than the materials.

* 2009.09, BlenteaThis is actually the first render I posted on the forums for critics. Samo warned me about the big ugly caustic patches and explained how to improve, but I never corrected it...

Ok, I'll continue next time.

BTW, I don't seek advices how to improve this renders. This stuff is frozen in time and I probably won't be doing any re-rendering.

@Samo, thanks & you are right, the reflections are quite strong. I used HDRI, the Debevec's "Cathedral" I believe it was. It provided the wanted illumination that would go with the background picture (which I also "stole" from the Intenetz, so credit for it goes to whomever is the author ), but it also contains some bright spots which are visible on the table (and in the glass bottom).

@STart, I'm sorry I can't help you much. I don't have a working Blender 2.49 + Yafa 011 build anymore, so the exact Yafa material settings are currently lost. All I know is that I used three separate materials, as you can see on the screen shot and the lemon inside is a blend between a glossy and shinydiffuse with transparency (or translucency?), IIRC.

When SSS will be introduced in the next Yafa version, I might re-render this tea scene.

But if anyone wants an explanation about the steam, here's the original thread (it's funny to re-read your old noobish posts )

* 2009.10, CactusA try at nature rendering with background composition. I made the scenario and try to fit it according the background pic (which is a LDR version of a HDRI from hdrlabs.com - I must mention that ). There are three levels of detail, the cactus-es & immediate surrounding, the log and a region beyond that (with a lone cactus).

The background was rendered on a plane together with everything else (there was no alpha pass at the time), so there was a lot of fine tuning of light & positions. I also had to miniaturize the region beyond the log, which is much closer than it looks, but very small so that it fits into the perspective on the image. A messy work. It was lit with a sunlamp only, PM I think. Material-wise, the big rock right of the main cactus-es is probably the thing that succeeded the most

* 2009.11, Velvet ShoesThis was a tough modeling challenge. I know, the shoes doesn't look very pretty, I was told that numerous times. But this was not about design, it was about managing at modeling, doing realistic materials and setting up a pleasant lighting. The cloth material could be done better, but all in all I consider this render a success.

* 2009.12, Karst Living RoomAnother try at archviz. This one is a little messed up. It wasn't planned, it evolved from the modeling of that sofa. I kept adding stuff to the scene and so a living room turned out, but the old style wardrobes and the sofa probably doesn't fit together, I don't know... There's the demon prop in the background which also doesn't fit in such a place Morale: plan things in advance and have a vision

The latest works are incredible... how did you do shoes leather texture? was it used real shoes photo? Is there reflection map or just bump ant diffuse? Real thread geometry would give super realism good work.

Thanks. IIRC, the leather texture was custom painted to give the impression (bump) of that seam going around the toe area. When I use a glossy material I always map diffuse, bump & specular intensity (and specular color, if materials is metal).

The read seam is real geometry - a small piece arrayed and curved around the shoe.

Now that I looked into it, I see it's not a custom painted map, but just a leather tex. (I'm almost positive it's from cgtextures, so you can find it there). I just oriented the UV grid to fit the seams on the tex. The spec & bump are a grayscale version of this.

* 2010.01, The TowerA friend of mine, who is a passionate of RPGs (as am I ), designed a nice bard game and we talked if I could create the graphics for the board. This render is a part of the board and represents some tower(s) where mages live, I think... Unfortunately the board consists of multiple diverse landscapes and playing cards, which constitute a lot of work, so this hobby project is still unfinished.

Once again I didn't have a clear vision of the procedure I had to use, so I started with detailed modelling & texturing, which at the end it didn't even show up in the final render. The door is too much detailed for it's final size, for example:

A spiked mace (somewhat lowpoly) example, which would be used as graphic for a playing card:

* 2010.03, The SanctuarySomewhere I found a picture of a stained glass window, which inspired me to do something with stained glass and nice light shining inside. I tried to use volumetrics, but it didn't produce satisfying results. The smoke and DOF is done in post. This one I actually posted for comments at the time of creation.

I'm not sure about exact render settings (it was a long time ago with old Yafa & Blender versions which I don't have anymore), but for all the projects so far I exclusively used Photon-mapping. PM is the most versatile kernel and has the best quality/speed ratio.

I use a good amount of photons (few millions), with usually smaller radius and something around 32 - 64 FG samples. Exteriors don't need a lot of FG samples. For AA I mostly use the default settings, except adaptive AA threshold is 0.1 or lower. Usually I use multiple passes with fewer samples.

The tower scene was illuminated by a sunlamp and DT sunsky background was used.

Sorry I can't be more detailed. Lately I got accustomed to take a screenshot of the render settings for every (semi)final render I do, but back then I didn't bother.